Twitter List Of Young Science Writers

The SA Incubator is a place where we explore and highlight the work of new and young science writers and journalists, especially those who are current or recent students in specialized science, health and environmental writing programs in schools of journalism. Here, we will discuss the current state and the future of science writing, and promote the best work that the young writers are doing.

The blog is written by Bora Zivkovic, Blogs Editor at Scientific American, and Khalil Cassimally, community manager of Nature Education's Scitable blog network.

Twitter is great. You can scan for breaking news or trending topics, fumble the keyboard in successive 140-keystrokes manoeuvres to share news and views and socialise with all the @-ing and DM-ing. Some (power-) users also specifically follow Twitter hashtags to keep abreast of conferences and be updated with updates from blog networks, for instance. Following user lists is another way to be in touch with certain communities.

With this in mind, I created a Twitter list of young science writers some time back. I originally created the list to keep in touch with the writings of young science writers. Most of articles I highlight in my biweekly picks on this blog, for instance, come from this list.

With time though, I began to see something interesting in my “Young Science Writers” Tweetdeck column. It became increasingly obvious that young science writers interact with one another—sometimes recounting funny anecdotes but many times commenting, critiquing, praising, defending and sharing works of their counterparts. Now, this has been happening way before I created the Twitter list but the latter nonetheless allowed me to witness those exchanges.

I think those exchanges are great. As young writers interact with one another, they get to know one another. They then form contacts and bonds which can be helpful further down the line: collaborations, the concept of “Friends in low places,” etc.

So, in an attempt to further promote interaction between young science writers, I thought I would publicise my “Young Science Writers” Twitter list here. If you’re a young science writer, you may want to follow the list to know what your counterparts are up to and to start conversing. (Send me a note if you should be but aren’t in the list.)

I think this list is a wonderful idea — helpful to readers and writers alike! It would be great if you could add me to it. I’ve been blogging since January but have only recently started using twitter (@inspiringsci).